


rhodonite and grief

by glueskin



Category: Servamp (Anime & Manga)
Genre: (uploads this at 7am on no sleep) its fine, Character Study, Depression, Grief/Mourning, Hanahaki Disease, LGBTQ Themes, Multi, Narcoleptic Misono, Panic Attacks, Regular Hanahaki-related Emetophobia, Relationship Study too for Kuro & Everyone I guess, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma and recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:40:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26658331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glueskin/pseuds/glueskin
Summary: the saga of sleepy ash developing a will to live, relearning how to communicate with people, admitting his mistakes, confronting his wrongdoings and making long overdue apologies.or, the time hyde glueskin told their friend they wanted to write kurogear hanahaki fic and accidentally started rewriting canon from kuro's pov.
Relationships: Background Licht Jekylland Todoroki/Hyde | Lawless, Background Tsukimitsu Miyako/Sendagaya Tetsu's Sister, Background Watanuki Sakuya/Shirota Mahiru, Kuro | Sleepy Ash & Hyde | lawless, Kuro | Sleepy Ash & Shirota Mahiru, Kuro | Sleepy Ash & Snow Lily | All of Love, Kuro | Sleepy Ash/Neugear Hatiwelt | Gear
Comments: 8
Kudos: 19





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi. i started this in july but then my laptop crashed and it took me a month to get a computer again and then right after i got my sexy desktop set up, patch 5.3 for xiv came out and i was busy with that....but i have quite a bit of this written already and i swear to god i want to finish before chapter 100 comes out in october and everything i say gets jossed.
> 
> not that it like. matters. since i dont care about canon which is why im writing fanfiction. anyway...it didnt fully hit me how actually miserable kuro is especially in the early chapters of servamp before greed pair arc...writing this made me real eyes and now i feel like im on the brink whenever i open the doc for this fic.
> 
> lastly, the 'background relationships' tagged WILL be actual relationships that develop and are explicitly discussed as being romantic in nature, so im not just gonna be fucking with you...but they arent the main focus of this fic, which is kuro and mahirus (platonic) relationship development and kuros growth...and, ultimately, him and gear meeting once more. also i listened to so much la dispute while writing this that its actually kind of worrying ? especially 'the last lost continent' and the entirety of their panorma album, hence the fic title...[the song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3WHGDHDA2M) doesnt _quite fit_ the fic itself, but the title (rhodonite, a stone associated with healing and recovering from emotional wounds, and grief, which is obvious) does.
> 
> lastly (for real this time) shout out to em for putting up with me screaming in their discord dms every day about the brain damage this fic is giving me and also for reading it as i go. love you so much
> 
> notes about certain characters pronouns and other things will be at the end of this chapter

Sleepy Ash doesn’t notice at first.  
  
He spends weeks wandering Japan in a daze. Most of his time is spent as a cat; he sleeps in alleys and under awnings and trees during rainfall, losing himself in the foggy grief blanketing him.  
  
Had his choice been correct?  
  
He wants to ask Gear, who in spite of his lack of interest in the lives of those he does not know had looked at him with an odd sort of concern when Sleepy Ash declared his intent to head for Japan.  
  
When Sleepy Ash had first left for Italy to meet with his siblings, he hadn’t seemed so worried; had muttered about CCC trying to control too much, but had otherwise been too interested in the camera he had somehow gotten his hands on to care.  
  
But then Gear had looked at him upon his return, his brow furrowed in the dim candlelight of his room, something closer to worry than he would usually show on his face.  
  
He dwells on it regardless and when he shifts for the first time in weeks, feeling uncomfortable in his human skin, he chalks the ache in his lungs up to the difference in the air.  
  
Japan is a long way from England, after all. Gear had mentioned the air might be different—less smoky, for one.

* * *

Sleepy Ash spends more time as a cat than as a person.  
  
He can't stand to look at himself—even without the strange itchiness in his lungs and throat plaguing him each time he shifts, when he catches sight of himself he feels sick to his stomach.   
  
He misses Gear more than ever come winter. Sleepy Ash runs cold, his heart thudding slower in his chest than a human heart should; the cold sinks into him painfully.  
  
Gear had always run warm, as if on the cusp of fever; when Sleepy Ash had asked about it during their first fumbling few weeks of acquaintance, Gear had claimed it was a werewolf thing. It was helpful in winter—Gear complained, but never actually shoved Sleepy Ash away when he would get clingy and leech off his warmth.  
  
He’s been remembering stuff like this a lot. It’s easier to think about Gear than it is to question himself and his choices; easier to remember Gear’s warmth, his low voice, his rare smiles.  
  
Sleepy Ash spends his birthday like this: damp and too thin, weighed down by wet fur as he takes shelter in a stone roadside shrine near a river of snowmelt, alone for the first time in almost a century.  
  
When he guiltily gives in to the painful hunger in his gut and chews away at some dried fish left as an offering, he wonders what Gear is doing.  
  
...Probably still fawning over his camera. He seemed pretty excited about sewing machines, too.  
  
Sleepy Ash should go back. He had said he would—had promised, so that he and Gear could fix that hole in the roof together. Gear had said a few years of travel would be inconsequential, but not to keep him waiting too long, and...how long has it been? Already almost four whole years.  
  
He tells himself he will. He'll go back when he can bring himself to transform long enough to make the trip, when the sight of his own face doesn't make him recoil with disgust.  
  
Soon, surely. It's already been a year since he had met his creator one last time.   
  
Surely he'll sort out his feelings soon.  
  
(The thought feels like a lie.)

* * *

It’s summer.  
  
The heat of the sun sinks deep into Sleepy Ash’s fur; it becomes scalding in its intensity, made worse by the humidity. The only relief brought by nightfall is the absence of the burning sun—it’s still uncomfortably warm to the point of discomfort, the air syrupy-thick and clinging to his fur.  
  
He’s been holed up in a dilapidated shrine—a wooden structure built more like a house but damaged by mudslides this past spring. Sleepy Ash had heard the villagers talking about repairing it soon and thought it might be as good a place as any to sleep away the heat undisturbed by everything but the song of surrounding cicadas.  
  
(Gear would be pleased, he thinks, that his Japanese is so good now—would be smug, too, that he’d had the foresight to introduce Sleepy Ash to a Dutch trader who could teach him the basics.)  
  
Sleepy Ash had been mostly right, but he hadn’t really slept much because of the heat; whenever he finally dozes, his sleep is even more fitful than usual—he wakes crying, his tiny feline body so much louder than it has any right to be.  
  
This time he wakes, writhing, his limbs too long and heavy—for a dizzying, fearful moment he thinks he’s changing into that beast again, but no. He had simply ended up back in his barely-human skin and he cries as much from relief as he does with the lingering memory of his creator’s vague, ever-indulgent smile.  
  
He can taste blood in his mouth. Not his own, but _theirs_ ; he feels as if that hulking, shadowy monster of a lion is trying to claw its way out from his skin and he shakes and sobs on the rotting wooden floor of the shrine, pulling his dark coat tightly against himself.  
  
Sleepy Ash cries until he’s heaving, breathless and out of tears, forehead pressed into the wood. He wants to go home. He misses the foggy streets of England, the way he and Gear would walk, every day without fail, to the harbour; he misses _Gear_ and the thought of him makes something ache in Sleepy Ashe’s chest.  
  
Maybe it’s time. Maybe he should go home, even if he can’t be in this form for long; maybe he can sneak onto a boat as a cat. Gear’s been waiting five years now. He’s probably already fixed that stupid hole in their roof.  
  
Maybe he isn’t waiting, though. Maybe he doesn’t care enough to; maybe he already gave up on Sleepy Ash.  
  
Sleepy Ash coughs, groaning, his stomach aching with what must be hunger, his throat burning with what must be thirst. He coughs again, and then again and again as something thick rises in his throat.  
  
It’s soft and slimy when it reaches his mouth; he coughs it onto the floor, wide-eyed, terror seizing him at the sight.  
  
The head of a flower, petals long and purple; autumn crocus, he thinks, dizzy with horror. He knows them by name because they grew in the countryside where he had once lived. Gear had called them meadow saffrons instead.  
  
The thought of Gear makes his throat itch.  
  
Sleepy Ash feels sick, crawling away from the offending plant fearfully. He had known it was possible—when last he had seen Lawless, he had been choking on the grief of his loss, so far gone that the asphodels in his lungs were coming up as whole plants, wood-like stems and all, the white petals damp with spit and reddened with blood.  
  
But he had not known it was possible for him. Not him, the most monstrous of his pseudo-siblings; not him, cowardly and unable to love even his own self.  
  
But he loves Gear. The realization is wrought with guilt. How can he go back like this? He remembers Gear scoffing at such things, at the notion one could love another so strongly their own feelings gradually tried to kill them.  
  
Sleepy Ash had, in a rare moment of courage, asked Gear if he’d ever experienced such love. Gear had looked at him, his gold eyes too bright in the evening light, and said that he had.  
  
Sleepy Ash had not pressed. He hadn’t wanted to know. In retrospect, his reluctance had not been born out of respect for Gear’s privacy or general disinterest. He coughs again, pressing his hand to his own throat, afraid. He can’t go back, he decides.  
  
Not like this. Not when the thought of Gear is growing flowers in his lungs. Gear has done so much for him; the least Sleepy Ash can do is stay away from him.  
  
Gear would feel bad, after all, even if it’s something that can’t be helped, even if he would pretend otherwise. The werewolf is better off without him; Sleepy Ash had all but forced his way into the other’s life, after all.  
  
So Sleepy Ash—recalling what All of Love had told Lawless about the symptoms not manifesting in animal form—swallows back another cough and forces himself back into being a cat.  
  
He feels both better and worse for it.  
  
Sleepy Ash closes his eyes and breathes. His tiny body shakes with the effort.  
  
The sound of the unbothered cicadas outside rings in his ears until he falls back asleep.

* * *

  
Years pass.  
  
Sleepy Ash sleeps and sleeps. For days or weeks at a time he sleeps, under old shrines or shadowed by abandoned fishing sheds at the riverside.  
  
In his waking hours he takes vague note of the passing of time; he checks newspapers, he listens to people talk. He wanders in cat form, eating scraps offered by children or pitying adults; rarely does he take his human shape, but when he does, he has to remind himself of the changing fashion and adjust to that as well.  
  
Two wars come and go. He sleeps through those, hiding in shelters and closing his eyes and ears alike.  
  
Technology advances. Telegrams become phones. Automobiles become wildly popular. Television is invented; cameras are able to record moving pictures. Soon they become colorized. Phones get smaller, more mobile; computers are commercialized.  
  
Every time he sees something new he thinks of Gear, of what he must think, of the way his tired eyes always became brighter whenever he got his hands on new things. The first time Sleepy Ash steps into an arcade in the 1970’s he imagines Gear’s starry eyes and subtle grin and has to hide away in the bathrooms, coughing and coughing until whole flowers—stems and all—cover the dirty floor.  
  
He doesn’t go back.  
  
He sleeps for six months under the stairs of a particularly isolated shrine only wakes when nearby construction forces him to.  
  
The new millennium arrives with little fanfare. He vaguely wonders how his siblings spent it; he wonders how his creator might have spent it; he wonders about Gear. He sleeps.  
  
When he meets someone properly for the first time in decades, maybe a whole century, he’s still half asleep. He wanders into the city in his underfed cat form, wondering what year it is, what month; a boy finds him, picks him up like he truly is nothing more than an animal before Sleepy Ash has the chance to flee.  
  
He’s just a child. He smells like flour and human sweat, his face plain, his body lithe; he carries Sleepy Ash carefully in his arms as if he’s fragile. His human heart beats quickly in his chest, his body so warm that Sleepy Ash finds himself falling asleep again; he wakes in the boy's apartment, a bell being fastened around his neck.  
  
 _Oh no_ , he thinks with sinking realization as the boy names him.  
  
“Kuro,” the boy calls him, voice warm. It makes something unfamiliar shudder and snap into place inside Sleepy Ash. A contract, he knows instinctively. He knows even if he’s never taken one before, but it’s weak and incomplete.  
  
It’s fine, Sleepy Ash consoles himself; as long as he remains in his cat form and the boy—Mahiru, he tells Sleepy Ash—doesn’t call him by his new name, it won’t settle. He can leave.  
  
But Mahiru’s home is comfortably cool from the amazingly modern invention of air conditioning. He gives Sleepy Ash fresh food. He tells himself _one day_ , just one day, maybe two or three at most; he’ll take advantage of the comfort of a home for the first time in forever.  
  
Mahiru is a child, after all. A student. He seems to live alone—since when did kids become so independent?—and so he can sleep the night away undisturbed. Mahiru has school, so Sleepy Ash can spend the day eating real, _human_ food that isn’t stolen and stale dumpster food or shrine offerings while he watches the news.  
  
So he does. He makes himself some instant ramen—humans are geniuses—and flips between several news channels all morning while he eats and skims magazines that had been left stacked by the chabudai.  
  
He loses track of the news because some kind of animated show about girls magically changing into bright costumes and fighting off some strange, vaguely humanoid enemies with odd powers that they hide from friends and family. It’s colorful and fascinating and one of the characters turns into a cat just like he does, so he loses track of time watching it.  
  
Mahiru comes home. Sleepy Ash, later, will barely remember what happens—he’s tired, he wants to sleep again. Mahiru hits him with a broom. The curtains open; he turns into a cat; the curtains get yanked shut again. He moans pitifully when he changes back.  
  
Then Mahiru says, “I thought you were a cat so I called you _Kuro_ ,” before Sleepy Ash can get his bearings and force himself into cat form; Sleepy Ash—Kuro, he’s Kuro—shudders and bites his tongue so hard he tastes blood when he feels something wrapping around his neck like a vice, sinking into his skin and settling beneath the surface.  
  
He hates it. He’s scared of it. Mahiru is confused and belligerent; he doesn’t listen to Kuro—no, he tells himself, he’s Sleepy Ash—trying to explain.  
  
It’s not like he hates the kid. Mahiru mentions the loss of his mother, neglects to mention a father and says his uncle is working. Sleepy Ash feels for him. He knows loneliness all too well, after all, but he doesn’t want this.  
  
He lets Mahiru drag him out to his friends, sullen and quiet; he doesn’t speak when Mahiru shoves his skinny, feline body at his equally young and wide-eyed friends, who listen to Mahiru’s ramblings about vampire cats with dubious expressions.  
  
He’s almost grateful when the crazy magician shows up, even if she smells like flowers and her heart beats too slow to be human. He knows what she is even before she strikes Mahiru’s friend; he wonders which of his siblings might have such a grudge against him and thinks _Lawless_.  
  
He wants to leave.  
  
Mahiru wants to fight.  
  
“Run away by yourself,” Mahiru tells him, angry disgust in his voice and his expression. Sleepy Ash watches him walk away and thinks of Lawless, whose voice had broken on sickly coughs as he screamed and cried and cursed Sleepy Ash in the aftermath of his decision.  
  
What right does Mahiru have to look at him that way? Sleepy Ash didn’t want this. He didn’t ask for this. Mahiru picked him up without thinking about how Sleepy Ash would feel; he gave him this name without understanding any consequences, barely listened or comprehended Sleepy Ash’s admittedly fumbled attempts to explain his existence.  
  
He smells blood. He feels the shadow of Mahiru’s desperation and hope through the surface of their half-finished contract. He thinks about his creator beneath the weight of his massive paws, between his jaws, and how he’d wanted to do the right thing.  
  
 _It’s your choice_ , Gear had said when he hadn’t known whether to discard CCC’s letter or speak to his siblings and the thought of him makes Sleepy Ash swallow back a cough.  
  
He doesn’t want to make any more choices. Not when every single one has driven him to regret. Still, Sleepy Ash finds himself moving, sucking in a breath and tasting warm blood in the air. He tries to remember how to move like this—he hasn’t in so, so long—and forces himself into movement.  
  
The magician’s sword stabs clean through him, bloodying Mahiru’s uniform behind him.  
  
It _hurts_. The blade slides between his ribs, through muscle and skin and his lung and right through his back and when he grabs onto the blade instinctively with a groan of pain it cuts into the skin of his palm as well.  
  
“Oh my,” the magician says, voice husky and eyes gleaming like rubies behind the lenses of her glasses.  
  
“Kuro,” Mahiru wheezes, interrupting his scattered thoughts, the fear and regret in his voice echoed shallowly in the beat of Sleepy Ash’s heart.  
  
“I haven’t had blood in centuries,” Sleepy Ash coughs out, feeling relieved when only blood spills past his lips. “I’m mostly just a cat, now. But if you give me yours...neither of us can back out, you know. It’s a pain.”  
  
The magician’s eyes narrow. She seems surprised, like she hadn’t realized that maybe their contract had yet to be solidified—  
  
Mahiru tugs at him, holding his arm up. He all but shoves his wrist against Sleepy Ash’s mouth.  
  
“If it’s us together,” he says, like they haven’t known each other for a handful of hours, “We can do it, Kuro.”  
  
He grimaces. Even though he doesn’t want to, he sinks his teeth into Mahiru’s wrist as the magician yanks her sword back out with a sickening squelch and a rush of blood—but Mahiru is healthy and uninjured, the taste of his certainty and determination heady on Sleepy Ash’s tongue. He can feel his damaged flesh knitting back together as the contract finishes snapping into place, tightening around his throat like a noose.  
  
Sleepy Ash shudders, closing his eyes, swallowing. Kuro licks the last remnants of blood from his mouth and opens his eyes, redder than they’ve been in hundreds of years.  
  
“Okay,” he says slowly, voice raspy. Something is lodged in his throat; he swallows it down with the blood, beginning to feel dizzy, limbs heavy and numb.  
  
“Whatever happens from here on isn’t my fault, okay?”  
  
Because Mahiru’s the one who wanted to fight so badly.  
  
The magician barely has time to blink before Kuro stalks forward, willing the shadows inside himself to bleed out of the skin of his hands. They spill out, coating his fingers and lengthening sharply into claws.  
  
Kuro doesn’t even think about it. Doesn’t let himself. The magician is choking on her own blood in moments, stumbling back from him—Kuro’s always been fast when he needs to be—but he doesn’t let her. His claws hook into the fabric of her bright clothes, yanking her back in. He thinks he hears Mahiru speaking but his ears are full of cotton as he opens his mouth, bracing himself for the taste of her blood.  
  
She’s a subclass, after all. She’ll die easily once he bites down.  
  
He doesn’t get the chance. The chain around his neck is being yanked, choking him; he lets go of the magician as he gags and stumbles back, turning with watery eyes to face Mahiru’s anger.  
  
“I said _enough!_ We don’t have to kill her if she can’t even fight anymore! You said I’m responsible for what you do now, right? So stop!”  
  
Mahiru stops yanking at the chain when Kuro is an arms length away from the magician; he coughs and Mahiru, anger shifting into guilt, lets go of the chain as Kuro’s shadowy claws melt off of his hands into the concrete beneath them.  
  
Kuro glances back towards the magician, rubbing his aching throat. She’s on the ground, blood pooling beneath her and spreading out on the road, a plethora of curses leaving her mouth as she punches her fist against the concrete to try and push herself up.  
  
“Contestants,” she coughs bloodily at them, a manic smile on her face, “Do you not understand where this train is going? A vampire parade in hell! A super-fun nightmare scenario you’ll _never escape!_ You’ll wish you killed me when you got the chance, baby Eve!”  
  
Then she reaches her blood-soaked hand to grab at her hat and shove it back on her head, her body transforming into that of a felt doll.  
  
Kuro is as surprised by _that_ as Mahiru is.  
  
“Is she dead…?” Mahiru asks tentatively as he walks over, picking up the doll from the pool of blood.  
  
“Are you an idiot?!” The doll scream-laughs, startling Mahiru into almost dropping it. “I’m a _vampire!_ ”  
  
“Shut up, you’re giving me a headache,” Kuro groans, as if he doesn’t already have one. He needs to change back soon—he can feel the flowers trying to make their way up his throat, knows if he stays like this much longer the symptoms of their poison will worsen.  
  
“No way! You never answered my carefully prepared quiz!” The magician cries, her felt-mouth unmoving, the red buttons of her eyes gleaming.  
  
It’s getting darker out. The streetlamps nearby are beginning to flicker on.  
  
“You mentioned a Tsubaki,” Mahiru remembers, lifting the doll by the neck with a frown. Had she? Kuro doesn’t remember. He hadn’t really been listening.  
  
“Yes, yes,” the doll sings. “Poor Tsubaki. It seems you don’t know him, either—poor, darling Tsubaki! No one knows him! Not even his siblings! That’s why he’s going to KILL☆EVERYONE!”  
  
“Okay,” Kuro mutters, eyelids growing heavy. Seriously, what the hell…? He met an old lady named Tsubaki once, but that was...before the second world war, so forever ago, and she’d been very human and ran a tea shop with her equally human husband.  
  
“You could pay a bit more attention,” Mahiru grouses. “I mean, someone wants to kill you! And a bunch of other people!”  
  
“I welcome him to try,” Kuro says before he can really stop himself. Mahiru looks confused, brow creasing as he opens his mouth to speak, but—  
  
Ah. Something moves in the corner of his vision; the heaviness in his limbs is familiar, now. Kuro should have noticed sooner.  
  
He’s unconscious before he hits the ground.

* * *

  
Kuro wakes when Mahiru does, if only briefly and because the boy grabs him out of the cat bed he’d been left in. He yawns and squirms in Mahiru’s grasp, the sun spilling brightly into the room through the uncovered windows.  
  
“Was it a dream?!” Mahiru all but demands in hysterics; Kuro mumbles and paws at his face, too tired and sore to think about it all. His chest still aches where the magician had thrust her sword, his back and legs tender from so much movement.  
  
So Kuro simply lets Mahiru manhandle him, ending up stuffed into his school bag as the kid leaves in a rush, frantic with the memory of his friend's injury.  
  
The magician-doll is in Mahiru’s bag, too.  
  
“Get off of me!” She whines and he hisses until she shuts up so he can fall back asleep despite being jostled with Mahiru’s every movement.  
  
His sleep this time is more restless; All of Love must have used their power to ensure his sleep would be deep and restful—and he does, in fact, feel more rested than he has since...well, since _England_.  
  
He still manages to sleep for another hour or so before the magician wakes him with her whining. Mahiru opens his bag in class, making Kuro squint as the fluorescent lighting in the ceiling hits his gaze, and goes from annoyed to deathly pale in the span of seconds once he realizes the magician is in his bag.  
  
“So annoying I could die,” Kuro groans when Mahiru closes his bag, yells an excuse at his teacher, and runs out of the room. The jostling has him and the magician hitting each other with each movement.  
  
“Then hurry and die,” she says, voice mockingly high pitched.  
  
Mahiru opens his bag again once he’s off of school grounds, lifting the magician as Kuro squirms out and climbs onto his shoulder to get some fresh air.  
  
“How did you even get in my bag? Hey, how did we even get home?”  
  
“Don’t know, don’t care,” the magician says, her stitched smile unmoving. “I’m hungry! I need blood, you know! I’m a vampire, remember?”  
  
“I don’t think you need enough to murder for it,” Mahiru snaps unthinkingly, then goes red-faced when a few people they pass give him odd looks. He slaps a hand over the magician's mouth as if that will silence her as he shoves her back into his bag—she’s a _doll_ , so of course her subsequent cursing is heard clearly.  
  
“You goddamn brat! Ugh, Tsubaki’s gonna _kill_ you! I bet he’ll let me eat you when he’s done!”  
  
“You keep mentioning this guy...hey, Kuro, you really don’t know him?” Mahiru asks. Kuro flexes his claws in Mahiru’s jacket to keep himself in place as the boy picks up his pace.  
  
“I already said I didn’t. I’m a defenseless cat—I haven’t talked to anyone in, um…” he tries to think about it. Maybe since the 90’s? He thinks he had talked to a kid who wandered into the forest and wound up near the roadside shrine he’d been sleeping in. “Well, a while.”  
  
Then he meows, hitting the back of Mahiru’s head with his tail, and the boy shoots him an annoyed glance.  
  
“You’re a vampire, not a cat.”  
  
 _I’m obviously both_ , Kuro is going to retort, but—  
  
A shiver crawls across his spine, skin crawling and fur standing on end. His tail puffs, his whiskers shaking, and moments later it begins to rain.  
  
“A sunshower…?” Mahiru mutters, lifting a hand to catch the water in his palm. Kuro’s claws dig through the fabric of his jacket and into his skin, making him wince as the familiar sound of geta on concrete rings out in Kuro’s ears.  
  
A thick white mist spills out from behind them. Mahiru tilts his head up as the white mist rises, solidifying around them, and—  
  
“Hey, you there.”  
  
An unfamiliar voice.  
  
The magician giggles.  
  
Mahiru turns. The one who spoke is a young looking man, dark hair clinging wetly to his handsome face, his eyes glinting red behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses. Despite it being the middle of the city, no festivals in sight, he’s clad in a dark yukata and a haori that bleeds from white to a red so rich it looks like blood.  
  
“Yes, you,” the man says, his voice smooth and hypnotic. Kuro would think it pleasant were it not for the way every single one of his senses screams _danger, danger_ at the sight of him. “There’s something interesting you want to tell me...right?”  
  
He smiles with a hint of teeth.  
  
“One day,” the magician begins to recite from Mahiru’s bag, “A young boy picked up a lost kitty...but! It was actually a suuuper☆strong vampire! Then, the boy obtained power from this vampire and nearly killed a beautiful poor magician! He was sooo done for☆!”  
  
“We should go,” Kuro tries to say as the magician speaks; he doesn’t think Mahiru even hears him over how loud the magician’s voice is.  
  
Then the man—the vampire, because it’s what he has to be, with eyes so red and a heartbeat so slow—laughs. He laughs and he laughs, his head thrown back in mirth, but he doesn’t sound happy. He cuts his own laughter off so abruptly that it’s jarring.  
  
“Ahhh...” he sighs, dropping his chin and staring back at them with dull eyes, “How boring.”  
  
Kuro slides off of Mahiru’s shoulder, ready to bolt, but Mahiru grabs him by the scruff of his neck before he can.  
  
“Don’t _run_ , idiot! You know this weird guy, right?” Mahiru hisses at him.  
  
“Of course I don’t, but I have self preservation instincts!” Kuro snaps back, trying to squirm out of his grip.  
  
“My, you two are quite something,” the man speaks again, sounding bored. Kuro and Mahiru both look back to him as he smiles and lifts a familiar bag.  
  
“Thank you, by the way. I was looking for this,” he says as he pulls the magician out.  
  
Kuro hadn’t seen him move, hadn’t felt him get close, and his throat tightens anxiously.  
  
“Tsubakyun is late! Do you know how sore I am now? They were so rough with me!” The magician complains.  
  
“Tsubakyun,” Mahiru repeats in a mutter, shell-shocked.  
  
“But you saved me,” the magician goes on, “So thank youuu, Tsubakyun☆! I’ll buy you a tub of Haagen Dazs later.”  
  
“Your life is worth a single Haagen Dazs?” The man asks, then laughs so hard his body shakes with it.  
  
“We should leave. Like, um, _right now_ ,” Kuro hisses at Mahiru, who is watching with horrified fascination.  
  
“He just came out of nowhere…” he’s muttering to himself. “And...Tsubakyun? He has to be…”  
  
The man appears before them in the span of a blink, a breath; he’s smiling blandly, pale lips stretching wide, and this close Kuro can see the evidence of sleeplessness under his eyes.  
  
“That’s right,” the man says in that hypnotic voice. “I’m Tsubaki. What of it?”  
  
Mahiru sucks in a breath. Kuro flexes his claws in Mahiru’s arm.  
  
“I caused all of the fighting,” Tsubaki continues, his tone as bland as his smile, “So what? I want to kill humans and vampires alike. _So what?_ You see, I’m very…” he reaches out, then, before either of them can register the movement; he rips Kuro off of Mahiru’s arm, throwing him aside, and his body twists and begins shifting of its own accord; he’s human-shaped when he hits the asphalt in a rush of breath.  
  
“Depressed.” Tsubaki finishes as Kuro gasps on the road, dazed, his lungs burning. Tsubaki is smiling down at him when he sits up and blinks the stars out of his eyes.  
  
“Sleepy Ash,” Tsubaki calls him, but something about the way he says it makes something uncomfortable twist in Kuro’s gut, “Or perhaps you prefer Sloth? Of all of my siblings, you ought to agree the world is a worthless place. I’m going to start a war—so how about it?”  
  
“I think you’ve got the wrong guy,” Kuro mutters, pushing himself off the ground and inching back behind Mahiru, who gives him an exhausted glance. He’s still working it out—Tsubaki is a vampire, but he can’t be a subclass; that would make him a _Servamp_ , which can’t be right. It can’t.  
  
Tsubaki laughs.  
  
“How mean! How awful, how _terrible!_ ” He laughs and laughs, his gaze becoming a wild, terrifying thing. “Not even you? None of my siblings know who I am either? How _boring!_ ” And he laughs even more, Kuro’s skin crawling with it.  
  
Mahiru looks disturbed, even more so when Tsubaki once again stops laughing with eerie suddenness.  
  
“You, boy,” Tsubaki says breathlessly, pointing to Mahiru. Kuro digs his fingers into Mahiru’s shoulders as if that will somehow keep him safe. “Do you know how many Servamps there are?”  
  
Mahiru, startled, glances between Kuro over his shoulder and back at the still-smiling Tsubaki.  
  
“I heard there were seven,” he says slowly. Ah. So he _had_ kind of listened when Kuro tried to explain things, though at this point Kuro himself barely remembers the conversation.  
  
“Wrong!” Tsubaki sings, clapping his hands, the magician slung over the crook of his elbow. “So close! There are _eight_ , you see.”  
  
His smile goes wider still, the faintest hint of teeth too sharp to be human showing themselves. Kuro can’t breathe. It’s not true. It can’t be true.  
  
“I am the eighth,” Tsubaki continues, that wild gleam still in his eyes. “He Who Is Coming, Uninvited—I am Tsubaki, I am Melancholy, your darling youngest sibling.”  
  
Melancholy. Kuro swallows, tongue heavy in his mouth, panic squirming in his gut. He would have known if their creator had made another, wouldn’t he?  
  
(But would he? He avoided them, he ran away, he had not seen them in centuries until the rainy night he had found them in that small Japanese village—)  
  
“Kuro looks younger, though,” Mahiru says. Of course _that’s_ what his mind sticks on; he sounds genuinely bothered by it.  
  
“Vampires don’t age so appearance doesn’t matter. I was the first,” Kuro says, barely registering his own voice as he stares at Tsubaki. The dark hair, the delicate looking skin, the misery that radiates from him even as he smiles—  
  
Kuro wouldn’t forget someone like him. There’s no way they’ve met before.  
  
“Ah, well,” Tsubaki chuckles, carefully adjusting the magician in his arms and fixing his haori. “I suppose that means you’ve yet to meet the others, young Eve? No butterflies or snakes? You’ll find we’re quite the diverse lot.”  
  
Cold creeps into Kuro’s veins, not from the still-present rain—All of Love he expected, considering yesterday’s interference, but is Doubt Doubt in the country…? That’s two too many of his siblings.  
  
At Mahiru’s confused expression, Tsubaki laughs once more, though not as wildly as before.  
  
“Haa...how boring. Well, that’s enough for one day. Shall we go home, Belkia?” He says that last bit to the doll in his arms; the magician responds with a groaned _finaaaaally_.  
  
Kuro agrees with the sentiment.  
  
Mahiru clearly doesn’t, because he shrugs Kuro’s hands off his shoulders and steps forward with a “ _Hey_ , wait a minute!”  
  
 _Please keep walking away, please keep walking away_ , Kuro chants in his mind, but alas, Tsubaki pauses as the thick white fog begins to dissipate.  
  
“Didn’t you say you’re going to destroy us? Destroy _mankind?_ ” Mahiru asks. Kuro starts to inch away—he doesn’t want to be part of this, he feels dizzy and nauseous; he wants to be a cat, he wants to _sleep_ —but Mahiru, without even looking, grabs at the back of his coat to keep him in place. Kuro is so desperate he’s almost tempted to slip out of the thing.  
  
“And what’s with this whole ‘war’ business?” Mahiru continues, getting progressively more worked up as he shakes out of his earlier shock. “All those reports and rumors of vampires attacking random people—was that you? Are you _killing people_?”  
  
Mahiru says _killing people_ like it’s the worst thing in the world. Objectively it might be, but Kuro thinks about himself, of his creator, of the people he had killed even before then, in his uncontrolled rampages—the taste of their blood thick and syrupy in his mouth, bones splintering beneath his massive paws.  
  
Kuro looks away. He feels faint.  
  
“Of course,” Tsubaki is replying, sounding almost amused. “If you haven’t noticed...I’m a vampire.”  
  
As if that’s justification for death; as if they can’t take blood without killing.  
  
“I only came to pick up Belkia, but...you’re quite the find, Shirota Mahiru,” Tsubaki adds, tone growing worryingly close to thoughtful. “Tell me, then. Do you know how many people died in this town yesterday? You don’t, do you? Of course not, with how many die all over the world each day. Counting how many were killed by vampires and how many weren’t—there’s no point, is there?”  
  
Kuro winces at the way Mahiru’s grip on his jacket tightens; he steps forward in his anger, pulling Kuro with him.  
  
“Are you _joking?_ Of course it matters! A life lost in an accident, a life lost to something _deliberate_ —there’s a difference! What the hell are you trying to do?! Stop getting random people involved!”  
  
“Mahiru,” Kuro croaks, trying to say _we need to go right fucking now_ , but he ends up coughing instead, watery eyed and swallowing back more bile than petals.  
  
“Random people…?” Tsubaki echoes, his faint amusement vanishing. His voice sounds unnervingly flat now and Kuro wants to _run_. “Ahhh...fools who think they have nothing to do with me... _bore me to tears._ ”  
  
Kuro dislodges himself from Mahiru’s grip just in time to feel Tsubaki’s wooden geta slamming into his head. He hits the road so hard the asphalt cracks under him; he wheezes, choking on spit and sick and swallowing back the thick, soft flower trying to escape.  
  
“That means you _especially_ , Sleepy Ash. You—all of you think you can get away with acting like an innocent bystander—”  
  
Tsubaki’s tirade is cut off when Mahiru throws himself at him; Kuro’s heart stops in his chest, panic seizing him at the sound of Tsubaki’s angered _out of my way_ ; before he realizes it, he’s slamming his hands against the concrete, forcing himself to flip upward and kick Tsubaki’s arms away from Mahiru, his vision blurry with dizziness and the blood dripping from his injured head.  
  
“ _Enough_ ,” he wheezes, coughing into his sleeve while grabbing onto Mahiru for leverage with his other hand. “God damn it, ow.”  
  
“Are you okay?” Mahiru shouts in a whisper as he grabs onto the hand clutching at his sweater vest.  
  
 _Do I look okay_ , Kuro wants to snap, but he just grimaces. He can’t answer anyway—Tsubaki is laughing again, slapping his knee with the effort of it.  
  
“Sleepy Ash? Protecting someone? Protecting a _human?_ So you really did make a contract! You, the one who never wanted an Eve to begin with!”  
  
He stops laughing. Belkia, the magician, groans in his arms about motion sickness; under his breath, too low for human ears, Kuro hears Tsubaki mutter _So I’m the only Servamp unbound._  
  
“Kuro, come on,” Mahiru says, trying to help him up, but Kuro’s limbs feel too heavy for his own body to carry, let alone for Mahiru; at first he thinks the boy has finally seen sense and wants to escape, but then he says, “If you drink my blood, we can win.”  
  
“No,” Kuro says immediately, his own blood and sick sour in the back of his throat. Mahiru glares, frustration radiating from his frame.  
  
“Why not? This guy is dead serious! We won’t win if you don’t!”  
  
“Because you provoked him,” Kuro finally snaps. “I don’t want to fight! I’m sore, I’m tired, I don’t even know him! It’s not my business!”  
  
He feels woozy as Mahiru somehow manages to drag him up by the lapels of his coat, shaking him with righteous indignation. It takes effort not to be sick all over him and Kuro is half-tempted to stop holding back.  
  
“What do you _mean_ it’s not your business?! Even if you don’t know him, he knows you and people's _lives_ are at stake! Stop complaining and fight!”  
  
Kuro grunts and opens his mouth to protest again when Mahiru shoves his wrist right against his mouth, scraping the skin on Kuro’s fangs; this time Kuro doesn’t hold himself back and wrestles away from Mahiru, spitting the blood against the road and staggering on his feet.  
  
“I said _no_ ,” he wheezes, vision going white-edged. “Yesterday, yesterday _hurt_. I don’t want to. I never wanted to do any of this. God, you’re such a pain!”  
  
He thinks Mahiru says something, maybe, but it’s hard to tell over the static in his brain and nausea roiling in his gut alongside hot shame and anger. It takes so much not to give in to the panicked desire to devour Mahiru, to change his shape not to that of a cat but that _beast_ and crush Mahiru’s small, frail body between his teeth for making him feel like this.  
  
Someone laughs. It’s not Tsubaki. It’s quieter, raspier, audible only to him; the remnants of that creature he’d begged Gear to carve away from him, still clinging to his rotten soul, shadows creeping across his vision and his skin.  
  
He chokes on his breath, crouching and wheezing, trying to remember how to breathe—how did he do it before? How did Gear show him, all those years ago? He used to press Kuro’s hand to his chest so he could feel each inhale, each exhale, counting the seconds with him.  
  
Gear isn’t here. Mahiru is saying something, or maybe he’s not. Kuro doesn’t know. The rainfall comes down heavier, shadows shimmering red-hued against the pavement, and Kuro squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to think about that creature—that parody of his feline form, with its sewn-shut mouth and sly voice.  
  
He thinks about breathing. He thinks about the taste of cup ramen, black tea, scones, pudding. Not blood, not meat.  
  
By the time Kuro is aware of himself again, he can’t tell how long it’s been—whether he had been out of it for a few seconds or a few minutes, he has no idea, but when he looks up Mahiru is pushing himself off the ground. When had he fallen?  
  
“Those catchphrases of yours,” Mahiru is saying as the static begins to fade from Kuro’s ears, “Are simple when you get down to it, aren’t they? ‘What a pain’ means ‘I’m scared’—” No, no it doesn’t, that’s not it at all—“and ‘how boring’ means ‘I’m lonely!’ So I’m saying I’ll give you a name and face you _head on!_ ”  
  
Kuro blinks the lingering spots out of his vision, as dazed by Mahiru’s proclamation as Tsubaki appears to be. Is that possible? Can someone _do_ that? He’s never heard of his siblings sharing an Eve before; fear jolts through his heart as Mahiru begins throwing himself toward Tsubaki, grabbing the front of his yukata.  
  
He’s angry. That doesn’t mean he wants Mahiru to accidentally get himself killed. Something flutters in his visions periphery, delicate and pink.  
  
“You have to let him go,” Kuro tries to shout around the sudden coughing fit that seizes his throat, at the same time Mahiru yells “Your name is going to be—”  
  
Kuro wheezes, crushed under Mahiru’s weight as they land next to a pile of trash in an alley.  
  
 _All of Love again_ , he thinks dizzily. He hadn't expected their help twice, had assumed that they were simply observing.  
  
“What th—Kuro, was that you?” Mahiru manages to get out, sounding rather out of breath himself as he slides off Kuro’s body.  
  
“No,” he mutters into the concrete. “If I could do that, I would’ve done it sooner. It was...those butterflies.”  
  
“Uh, butterflies?” Mahiru looks at him like he's crazy when Kuro lifts his head and he rolls his eyes, then grimaces because it makes the dizziness worse.  
  
“You saw them, right? They were illusions. My sibling, the Servamp of Lust, called All of Love...they can create illusions and swap objects around.”  
  
“Oh...then, that means he’s on our side, right? Is he still around?” Mahiru asks, craning his neck around the alley as if All of Love will pop out of one the trash bins.  
  
“No way. They were probably just passing by,” Kuro refutes, sitting up and leaning back against the brick wall behind him, heedless of the filth. He’s too tired to care.  
  
“You’ll get killed if you pull more stunts like that, you know,” he adds, wiping some of the drying blood sticking to his face off with the sleeve of his coat as Mahiru turns back to look at him. “Seriously. Being my Eve makes you a bit more durable, but I can’t do a lot.”  
  
“Oh jeez, that Tsubaki guy did a number on you. Are you really okay?” Mahiru asks worriedly, ignoring what he’d just said. _Please die_ , Kuro wants to say, but he swallows it back because it’s mean and uncalled for.  
  
“I’ll be fine,” he mutters. Mahiru sighs with relief, then joins him in slumping against the wall.  
  
“God, life got so complicated so quickly…I’m beat,” he admits, as if _he’s_ the one who his face curbstomped. Kuro grumbles, slouching further, and _finally_ releases his grasp on his human skin in favor of becoming a cat.  
  
“I’m done dealing with this now...forming a contract was a mistake,” he complains, mostly to himself. His fuzzy, nausea-addled thoughts begin to clear now that he isn’t choking on toxic flowers and his own panic.  
  
For a moment Mahiru is quiet. He reaches out to stroke Kuro’s fur as if he’s truly only a housecat and despite himself Kuro purrs, pressing into Mahiru’s hand.  
  
“Should we...find the other Servamps?” Mahiru eventually asks. Kuro abruptly stops purring and looks at him incredulously, but the boy is—of course—serious.  
  
“Um, absolutely not,” Kuro says, wanting to hide his face in his paws. Mahiru huffs.  
  
“Why not? Right now we might be the only one of them to know what that Tsubaki guy is up to. We should work together.”  
  
Kuro groans and this time he really does hide his face in his paws as Mahiru lifts him by the scruff.  
  
“Even if you say that, I don’t know any of their addresses, numbers, or even email,” he says and is about to add _and I don’t even want to do this_ when a slip of paper drifts down between them onto Mahiru’s lap.  
  
[ _alice-in-the-garden@aliceinco.ne.jp_](mailto:alice-in-the-garden@aliceinco.ne.jp).  
  
“...Scary,” Kuro mutters. “They’ve got ears everywhere, I guess.”  
  
“Well. This is a start, at least,” Mahiru says, sounding pleased as he tucks the paper away and carefully lifts Kuro in his arms. “Come on. I never got my bag back from that Tsubaki guy, but I only had a few things in it...ah, I don’t like lying but I guess I’ll have to tell sensei that I left it on the train since my textbooks were in there…”  
  
Kuro dozes as Mahiru rambles, the exhaustion finally catching up to him.  
  
At least his dreams are a bit quieter when so close to someone else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact i love coffee and my username is glueskin :)
> 
> belkia: ☆  
> mahiru: how are you saying that with your mouth  
> belkia: wouldnt you like to know, lawyer boy 
> 
> some things:  
> \- a 'chabudai' are those low-seated tables you see in japanese households, usually round in shape  
> \- i hope i portrayed tsubaki well. i havent written him before, but i love his character a lot and his entire...everything... makes me so emo...so i hope i was able to adequately convey not only how unsettling he is, but also how sad  
> \- yes kuro literally has a panic attack because mahiru tried to force him to fight. he really, really does not like using his powers for a variety of reasons and mahiru has yet to realize just how genuinely kuro is messed up right now...not only because hes 15 and so sure of himself but also because kuro is incapable of communicating with people  
> \- japanese is a relatively genderless language, barring specific words like 'man' or 'woman'. kuro perceives belkia as a woman (successfully; i write her as a trans woman) and so does mahiru, so they use she/her for her. when talking about lily towards the end of the chapter, kuro would probably have used the word 'kyoudai', which can mean 'male siblings' or simply 'siblings'. mahiru is assuming that kuros sibling is a man, so i had him use he/him, while kuro knows that lily identifies as neither a man or a woman, and so i had him use they/them  
> \- not only is kuro just Mentally Ill in general but the flowers hes coughing up, meadow saffrons, are toxic and consuming them gives symptoms similar to arsenic poisoning. its not as bad for him because hes a vampire so his body is constantly filtering the toxicity out, but because its Always Present, he still experiences some symptoms...so the longer he remains in his human form, the more out of it he feels
> 
> lastly, sorry if it seems i mention gear too much. kuro misses him and because of the hanahaki constantly reminding him of his feelings, which have yet to fade, there are times kuro cant help but think of him and moments where hes reminded of him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> mahiru has a no good very bad time 
> 
> two chapters at once!! wow!! oh my god!!
> 
> notes about things that happen in this chapter will be at the end

The next few days pass blurrily like so.  
  
Kuro is dragged to and from school because of Mahiru; he mostly sleeps and then mooches snacks off of his classmates during breaks. They meet All of Love—their name is Snow Lily, now—and their Eve. Alicein Misono is young and arrogant but well meaning, even if he does attack Mahiru and Kuro a single day into their acquaintance.  
  
“I wonder why Lily’s subclass are all children,” Mahiru muses when they go back home that night. Kuro hums vaguely, a distant, stomach-churning concern making his head hurt even in cat form.  
  
All of Love has always been like that. Kuro doesn’t tell Mahiru this, or share his own vague suspicions about why; it isn’t his place.  
  
Instead he says, “If it ever comes up, don’t use words like ‘man’ or ‘woman’ for them, okay?”  
  
Kuro thinks it’s a good thing Japan has such a gender-neutral way of speaking to and about people; Lily probably thinks so, too.  
  
Mahiru gives him a confused look as they step into a convenience store.  
  
“What do you mean?” He asks.  
  
“There’s a word for it, I think,” Kuro says as he follows Mahiru to the shelf with cup ramen. “I don’t know if it’s different in Japanese. Lily isn’t a man or a woman, so if it comes up, uh...don’t say, ‘that man’ or ‘that woman’ is Lily.”  
  
“Oh!” Mahiru exclaims, slapping his fist into his palm. “ _X-Gender_ , right? Or, no, they call it something else in English. But it’s about the same. Koyuki is like that, too, so you might see them switch their uniform and stuff.” Then he pauses, giving Kuro an odd look.  
  
“Was it okay for you to tell me?”  
  
Kuro thinks about it for a second as Mahiru picks one of the cheapest, blandest (ugh) cup ramens off the shelf.  
  
“I think so. Lily has always been open about it but doesn’t like to correct people they don’t know well, so…”  
  
Mahiru nods, grimacing and smacking at Kuro’s hand when he tries to drop a spicier cup ramen into the basket.  
  
“Alright then. We’re meeting more of your siblings tomorrow, right? I’m looking forward to it.”  
  
At least one of them is. Kuro sure isn’t. The dark sky and heavy rain that persist throughout the following day suit his mood just fine.  
  
More of his siblings are in Japan than he expected. Doubt Doubt is there, as anticipated from what Tsubaki had said, though he hides himself beneath the table and has forgone his mourning veils in favor of paper bags for some odd reason.  
  
World End and Wrath, on the other hand, Kuro hadn’t expected to see—World End rarely leaves Europe, sticking to Italy and not often going past its immediate surroundings. Wrath goes wherever she feels needed.  
  
He wishes they weren’t here. Even though they had said all those years ago that they would forgive him, Kuro can’t help but feel their gazes are harsh and judging.  
  
Mahiru seems at a loss where he sits in the booth at Kuro’s side; he follows the flow of conversation—Lawless has been making waves in America, Old Child has been quiet but is probably still in the UK, Wrath’s Eve is an apple farmer from Aomori who has been bedridden of late; she brought with her a basket of fresh apples for them to try—with growing confusion and even indignation.  
  
Mahiru can’t take it anymore, interrupting when World End is once again asking who is footing the bill. He stands up, slamming his hands into the table; Kuro can feel Doubt Doubt shifting beneath and he sees Lily grimace at Kuro’s side—when Kuro glances down he sees Doubt Doubt had instinctively grabbed onto Lily’s shin, the red of his eyes and his thin, grimacing lips the only parts of his face visible.  
  
Right. He’d forgotten how jumpy Doubt Doubt is; his other hand is probably clutching a gun, but thankfully he hasn’t used it.  
  
“Isn’t this supposed to be a _meeting?_ ” Mahiru cries out. Luckily they’re the only patrons right now, but the waitress does give them an odd look as Mahiru goes on, voice too loud, “I saw the Vampire SNS—aren’t all those subclass being troubled by Tsubaki? If you don’t take action soon—”  
  
“Speaking of subclass…” Wrath interrupts, her husky voice cutting right through Mahiru’s rant. “Most are too weak and turn to ash in the sun, but I heard his can not only survive but retain human form. Is that true?”  
  
“It’s probably true,” Lily allows, glancing away from Wrath’s fierce expression. “I was attacked by them during the day. It seems like they’ve conquered the sun and can blend in normally with humans...but they’re also combat trained.”  
  
They all share an unhappy look.  
  
“We’re completely peaceful, so that’s a bother,” Lily adds. In his periphery Kuro sees movement; glancing down again, he sees Doubt Doubt has released his hold on their leg, his hand disappearing back into the length of his sleeve.  
  
Well. Most of them are peaceful. If Doubt Doubt is anything like he was, then he probably has few—if any—subclass. But if he _does_ , then they’re probably capable.  
  
“Some of mine can fight, but I don’t encourage it,” Wrath is saying, lifting her coffee to her mouth. “They’re well-bahaved children.”  
  
“Mm. It’d be nice if someone else could handle this,” World End says around a mouthful of apple, reaching for his glass of water.  
  
“I’m completely uninvolved,” Kuro says, chewing the edge of his sadly empty glass. “I’ve basically done nothing but sleep for a century.”  
  
Not only does he get an odd expression from Wrath at his words but even World End briefly pauses his chewing, apparently taken aback. Before they can speak, however, Mahiru has once again become fed up.  
  
“What do you guys mean by ‘somebody else’? Isn’t the problem being caused by vampires? Tsubaki and his people are killing humans and subclass alike without a second thought, and you’re just going to let it happen?”  
  
Kuro knows where this is going. He grimaces, sucking a piece of ice into his mouth and hoping the shock of cold will help ground him as Mahiru, in all of his righteous dissatisfaction, says, “The people who need to do something about it...thinking simply, isn’t it us?!”  
  
Kuro isn’t the only person to look at him in bafflement; Wrath and World End seem especially surprised.  
  
“Okay! Got it!” World End suddenly exclaims, dropping the restaurant menu he’d grabbed in favour of taking hold of Mahiru’s shirt front.  
  
“You can do it, then! Gather the Servamps, save us from Tsubaki, whatever! Since you want to do it so bad, there’s no problem, right?”  
  
“H-Hold on—!” Mahiru gasps as he’s grabbed in a headlock.  
  
“That’s a fine idea,” Wrath says pleasantly. “I’m troubled by Tsubaki, so I’d like to help if I can. I’ll need to return to my Eve soon, but…” she trails off with an odd sigh, drinking more of her coffee.  
  
“Okay then, Mahiru can be our leader,” Lily says with a faint clap of their hands. “World End is right. Since Mahiru wants to get it done so badly, he’s the best one for the job right now! But if he’s going to fight...he’ll need a weapon, won’t he?”  
  
The look on Lily’s face is nothing short of mischievous as they grin slyly at Kuro, who stiffens.  
  
“A weapon?” Mahiru repeats, finally freeing himself from World End’s grasp. “What, like Misono’s chair…?”  
  
“What would you do with a weapon? It’s much easier to pretend not to know anything—to forget all of this,” Kuro mutters, more to himself than Mahiru. This was an inevitable part of their contract, but _still_. He feels slightly bitter towards Lily for cornering him in this.  
  
“I don’t know a lot about vampires yet, but I can’t just run away,” Mahiru snaps at him. “I have things I want to protect, and because I don’t want to regret anything—”  
  
“You need a weapon?” Kuro finishes, voice going flat at Mahiru’s words. _Because I don’t want to regret anything_.  
  
Kuro doesn’t want to regret anything else, either. But when Mahiru says, “If it gives me the power to protect, I need it,” Kuro closes his eyes and turns his face to press his forehead into the table.  
  
“Fine then. Take it,” he mutters, letting the power within him stir.  
  
The creature within him giggles, barely-audible, and he hopes it doesn’t say anything unnecessary to Mahiru.  
  
Within moments the shadows are oozing not out of his own body but from Mahiru’s wrist; a broom-like shape forms and explodes outward, flying around the restaurant and startling a young couple who had just sat down as well as the waitress.  
  
World End howls with laughter as Mahiru panics, clutching his marked wrist and trying to call the weapon back.  
  
It would be funny if Kuro didn’t feel so tired. He feels heavy, limbs weighed down as he’s forced to drag himself out of his seat when they get kicked out by staff; he coughs harshly into his sleeve as they step outside into the rain, prompting a concerned look from Wrath.  
  
“Well! Now you’ve got a weapon!” Lily says cheerfully as the rain patters heavily against the restaurant's awning. The smell of the wet earth and damp air fills Kuro’s aching lungs and sinuses; he distantly recalls the nights Gear would drag his chair to the window, sitting with whatever book he’d taken to reading that evening as the rain came down harshly against the windows.  
  
Something soft and wet makes its way up his throat when he coughs again. He chokes it down alongside the memory of how Gear used to look in the dim candlelight, eyes half-closed and mouth just barely curved into a smile.  
  
“Are you alright, brother?” Wrath asks him quietly, her long-fingered hand touching his elbow gently. She’s tall—taller than him—and her expression as she gazes down at him is full of genuine concern.  
  
“Fine. Just—some of the ice from my drink melted funny in my throat,” he lies. Wrath frowns at him and for one long, awful moment he fears she might call him on his bullshit, but instead she simply releases his arm with a nod.  
  
“Huh?!” Mahiru cries out, startling Kuro into glancing his way; he had reacted to something Lily had said, judging by the smile on Lily’s face.  
  
“We’re in your hands, Mahiru!” Lily says, patting Mahiru’s back as the boy sputters and tugs the wristband his friend had bought him on, covering the focus for his weapon.  
  
“Can’t it be a _group effort_ ,” Mahiru grouses, irritation on his face, only to pause.  
  
Doubt Doubt slinks out from behind Lily; Kuro tenses, but his arms are limp at his sides, his posture lax and unthreatening.  
  
“Someone…” Doubt Doubt says, voice almost inaudible and raspy from disuse. All of them wait as he struggles to find his words again, even Mahiru, though he looks confused.  
  
“...Killed. By Tsubaki’s...subclass. Just now,” Doubt Doubt finishes, voice fading in a raspy mumble.  
  
“Again,” Lily mutters, sounding put out, and Mahiru remains quiet.  
  
They part ways on that gloomy note, Kuro hiding from the rain—and his sickness—in cat form, cocooned in Mahiru’s bag.  
  
If he sleeps beneath Mahiru's window instead of in his bed, curled on the edge in his cat form, well. At least Mahiru doesn't ask why.

* * *

  
They go back to the Alicein household the next day so Mahiru can learn how to use his weapon.  
  
Kuro wishes he were asleep. He spends the entire visit hoping Lily won’t say too much as he plays a game on Mahiru’s handheld device; the game itself is fun and interesting, about a group of travelers whose paths converge, each one having their own unique story quest.  
  
He wonders, briefly, if Gear has played it and has to swallow back the itch in his throat.  
  
A shadow of Mahiru’s surging feelings of love and determination stirs in Kuro’s own heart as he glances up from his game. It's irritating—he hadn't realized how often it would happen, though he had known, vaguely, that Servamps and Eves could sometimes pick up in each others emotions.  
  
“Friends and family...because I want to protect these important things, we'll get rid of anyone who gets in our way,” Mahiru is telling a wide-eyed Misono.  
  
“Right, Kuro?” Mahiru grins at him unexpectedly and Kuro flinches back.  
  
“Why are you turning to _me?_ That’s…” he trails off, averting his gaze from Mahiru’s own bright, honest expression. “I’ll only protect someone if you tell me too and kill someone if you tell me too.”  
  
After all, if it’s left up to Kuro again, he…  
  
“What’s with that?” Mahiru asks. “Don’t you—ack! Just now, the tattoo glowed!”  
  
Did it? Kuro glances back at Mahiru, frantically showing Lily his wrist, and back down at his game.  
  
Misono falls asleep. He hears it without looking in the way the boy has slumped forward, his breath rattling slightly in his lungs, and so he saves and shuts off the device. Lily sees them out.  
  
They go home. Kuro sleeps fitfully, dreaming of Italy and of Lawless and his condemnation; of Japan and the taste of blood and meat in his mouth.  
  
Mahiru spends the day fussing over the absence of his friend, the habitual liar who had given him that wristband—Kuro sleeps in his bag, waking only when jostled, feeling sick even though he’s in cat form.  
  
He wakes in the afternoon when Mahiru leaves the school behind—he had stayed so late for festival preparations that the sun has already begun to set.  
  
They stop at a convenience store. Kuro squirms out of Mahiru’s bag when they leave, climbing up his shoulder.  
  
“I thought we got everything on the list the other day,” he says sleepily.  
  
“We did. These are for Sakuya—knowing him, he probably didn’t cook anything...he’s not very great at taking care of himself,” Mahiru explains.  
  
“Sakuya...the liar with the ahoge, right?” Kuro asks to be sure.  
  
“That’s right. He was acting odd the other day, but I didn’t push...maybe I should have. He tends to brush off his feelings as a joke, even after all these years.”  
  
All these years…?  
  
“How long have you known each other?” Kuro asks, not entirely interested in the answer.  
  
“Ah, since elementary...school…?” Mahiru pauses, steps faltering. “Or was it middle school…?”  
  
Kuro frowns.  
  
“Sakuya lost his parents like I did, but...how did they die again…?” Mahiru mutters to himself, stumbling to a stop beneath a streetlight.  
  
“Hey, are you okay?” Kuro asks, fur standing uncomfortably on end as he flexes his claws in Mahiru’s blazer.  
  
Mahiru doesn’t answer, his muttering becoming incoherent as he lifts a hand to his face and tries, desperately, to recall where one of his best friends might live.  
  
“Mahiru?” Someone says behind them; both Mahiru and Kuro startle, with Kuro digging his claws into Mahiru’s shoulder through the fabric, making him wince.  
  
“Sakuya!” Mahiru cries out with relief, grinning as if the previous few minutes hadn’t just happened.  
  
“What’s wrong with you, Mahiru? And hey, what are you even doing out here…?” Sakuya asks. Kuro hadn’t paid attention to him—or any of Mahiru’s friends—before this, but he does now, eyes narrowing and skin shivering.  
  
“More important than that—Sakuya, why haven’t you been going to school? I was worried!”  
  
Sakuya gives a nervous laugh.  
  
“Well, you know how I was saying vampires have been in this area lately, right? Recently I was attacked by one! I was so scared I could barely leave the house! So…”  
  
 _To what extent was all that a lie_ , Sakuya finishes the story as Mahiru groans and hits him gently in the head with his bag of food.  
  
“I knew you’d say that!” Mahiru huffs, grinning despite himself.  
  
But something is odd. Despite Sakuya’s own smile, his eyes...Kuro hadn’t noticed, but they aren’t quite brown. They’re more like rust, and he smells like...flowers…  
  
Kuro flexes his claws again. They should go, but he can’t say as much out loud—not here, in front of Sakuya, and Mahiru won’t believe him anyway. As he listens, Kuro wonders how he didn’t notice sooner, for Sakuya’s heart beats too slowly within his chest for him to be human.  
  
Someone screams, shrill and piercing, and yet even as Sakuya pulls Mahiru—and subsequently Kuro—down an alley, nobody else turns their head at the sound.  
  
“Wait, Sakuya, where are we going?” Mahiru asks as he lets himself be pulled along.  
  
“Don’t worry,” Sakuya says, not looking back at them. It makes Kuro worry even more. “After all, I’m your friend. I wouldn’t betray you.”  
  
Sakuya pulls them into the fenced-off area between two apartment buildings where the industrial sized waste bins are stored; he lets go of Mahiru, who stumbles to a stop, Kuro clinging onto him all the while.  
  
“Sakuya? Why did you bring me out here?” Mahiru asks. He sounds concerned, but not afraid as Kuro is sure he should be.  
  
“Do you trust me, Mahiru?” Sakuya asks without looking back. When Mahiru doesn’t answer immediately, Sakuya sighs.  
  
“No...if you trusted me, you wouldn’t lie to me. Right?”  
  
“You’re acting strange, Sakuya,” Mahiru says, stepping closer despite Kuro hissing a _run, run_ in his ear. “Did something happen?”  
  
“Mahiru,” Sakuya says, ignoring the question and still refusing to look back, “To what extent is our relationship a lie?”  
  
Kuro yowls in discomfort as both he and Mahiru are suddenly caught in a web of strings; he writhes in their grip, feeling the thin—but thankfully soft-edged—strings dig into his skin and pull at his tail.  
  
He outright _shrieks_ when a familiar pair of swords stab into the ground on either side of him, their pink, star-decorated handles bright even in the dim light of this isolated alley.  
  
“Applause! Applause!” An all too familiar voice crows. “The special skewering show has begun at last!”  
  
“But, but that’s…” Mahiru sputters, suspended in the air at Kuro’s side.  
  
“Mahiru...I told you, didn’t I?” Sakuya asks, expression twisting into something hurt and angered. “That vampires were seen in this area. Even though I told you so, so, so, so, so, _so many times…_ !!!”  
  
“He’s a subclass,” Kuro hisses to Mahiru, still staring in shock as the magician—Belkia, Kuro recalls—scolds Sakuya.  
  
“But that doesn’t…” Mahiru trails off, staring forward at Sakuya with wide, helpless eyes. Guilt twists in Kuro’s stomach. He should have noticed.  
  
“Mahiru,” Sakuya begins, stepping forward. “Have you ever thought that the world might have appeared only five minutes ago?”  
  
“What are you talking about?” Mahiru’s voice shakes. He doesn’t even try to escape his bindings.  
  
Sakuya isn’t smiling.  
  
“You would think it couldn’t be true since you have memories of the past, right?” He continues. His eyes gleam a brighter red in the dark as the sun finishes its descent in the horizon; the alley is lit only by the dim stars and lights from the buildings surrounding them.  
  
“But what if those memories had been planted in your head five minutes ago? Well? What if all your memories are a lie, and I became your best friend just five minutes ago?”  
  
Kuro can feel the echo of Mahiru’s confusion and uncertainty, so strong that it is; he feels, too, the betrayed hurt.  
  
“Can you prove that it’s not true?” Sakuya presses. “When your mother died...what was it I said to you?”  
  
Kuro doesn’t need to see the horrified realization creeping into Mahiru’s expression. He feels it keenly within himself through their contract, making him dizzy.  
  
Sakuya draws knives from his pockets, small and thin but razor-sharp. They gleam silver in the dark as his smile becomes a twisted, unhappy thing.  
  
“To what extent were our shared memories a lie?”  
  
Mahiru is in no state to move. Kuro forces himself to transform, willing the shadows within his clothes to fortify themselves—the strings cut apart when they try to tighten around him and it’s Kuro who is being cut through by Sakuya’s knives when the subclass rushes forward.  
  
“Kuro!” Mahiru cries out in shock as the magician’s familiar swords impale Kuro once more, stabbing through his back and pinning him into the concrete.  
  
Kuro is so dizzy with the pain and the effort it takes not to cough out more than just blood that he almost misses Mahiru’s frantic exclamations of denial.  
  
 _Stupid kid_ , he thinks with exasperation, face aching from where his nose had smashed into the ground, his back burning with pain. Each breath he takes is agonizing and wet sounding—one of Belkia’s swords went through his lung.  
  
“It would be nice if it were a lie, wouldn’t it?” Sakuya crows, his voice high and mocking. “That vampires exist, that I’m one of them—humans love lies that are convenient to them, don’t they?”  
  
 _Not just humans_ , Kuro doesn’t say.  
  
“It was so easy to hypnotize you into believing we were childhood friends,” Sakuya goes on. “It was something you yourself wanted, after all. So tell me…”  
  
Sakuya steps closer, just a bit, and Kuro tenses in preparation to force himself up despite the pain he’s in.  
  
“Why did you do it, Mahiru? If you hadn’t picked up that filthy cat and lied to me...I would still be on your side!”  
  
He sounds so genuinely hurt and upset that when Kuro glances up through his hair, he isn’t shocked by the dismay on the boy's face.  
  
“Tomorrow...I still could’ve been your friend. But because you lied to me, our world has to end!”  
  
“I just didn’t want my friends to get involved in something so dangerous!” Mahiru protests desperately, but a well meaning lie is still a lie and Sakuya’s expression is one of anger and grief.  
  
“Shut _up!_ You just didn’t trust me! If you really saw me as a friend, why would you lie? Or are you trying to say you lied _for my sake?_ ”  
  
His laughter at the idea is a brittle, rattling thing, his eyes wide and wild. The sight hurts Kuro’s heart even without the echo of Mahiru’s own pain in his chest.  
  
“No. What I hate more than anything...are liars. Because you lied to me, I can never believe a word you say again. Let me explain, Mahiru, how much it hurts to be lied to by someone you trust—it’s like being cut into pieces, and once you’ve been cut up, you can’t go back to how you were. If you lie even once, the relationship deteriorates.”  
  
Kuro thinks he can understand. He also thinks he doesn’t want to find out what had happened to Sakuya to make him like this.  
  
“Of course,” Sakuya laughs, a hysterical note entering his voice, “I lied, too. Since I knew you lied but acted as if I didn’t know. Haha! Humans really are awful. Even if you’re careful not to betray someone, you always end up being betrayed anyway.”  
  
“Ugh, are you done yet, Sakuya? I wanna chop-chop- _chop them up!_ ” Belkia whines. Kuro sucks in a wheezing breath at the sound of her voice, the sound rattling wetly in his chest, and he can hear Mahiru shift behind him.  
  
“Kuro, your wound...my blood—” Mahiru starts, but Kuro coughs and shakes his head against the ground.  
  
“It won’t help,” he says, voice rough and the words coming out somewhat gargled. “It isn’t the ‘blood’ of an Eve that gives us power...it’s their will, transferred through the blood. Right now, you don’t even know if you want to protect or kill anyone. I won’t be able to do anything.”  
  
The despairing realization that rises up in Mahiru knots itself in Kuro’s own chest. He breathes, spit and blood bubbling at his lips until he can no longer hold back his coughing.  
  
He hears Mahiru yelp. Before Kuro can try to look, the painful sensation of the swords being tugged out of him becomes a distraction; he groans in pain, face contorting with discomfort and disgust as they’re pulled out with a sickening squelch.  
  
He shifts his body into that of a cat instinctively, hoping to hasten his healing, and when he looks up with vision fuzzy from pained tears, Kuro is caught between relief and more concern.  
  
Lily avoids conflict the most out of them all, after all, and Sakuya is a child—more than that, he’s the exact type of child Lily tries so hard to save.  
  
Misono is confident, at least. Kuro doesn’t need to see his face to know he has a haughty sneer; it’s audible in his voice when he says, “So you’re Shirota’s friend? How disappointing.”  
  
“Fighting isn’t my specialty, but...I shall do my best.” Lily adds.  
  
Belkia answers Lily’s statement with crazed laughter. Kuro can see why she hangs out with Tsubaki.  
  
“Applause! Applause! What a treat, to skewer a butterfly! Shall I pin you up on my wall?” She jeers before launching herself at Lily, who avoids replicating Kuro’s impaled fate by deflecting with a scythe—and _that’s_ new, at least as far as he’s aware. Lily never used to use physical weapons.  
  
Sakuya is speaking to Misono— _you won’t really hurt me, I’m his friend_ —but Misono stands surprisingly firm.  
  
“When and why did you approach Shirota Mahiru?” Misono asks, interrupting Sakuya.  
  
For a moment it’s quiet. Sakuya actually falters; all Kuro can hear is his own heart, Mahiru’s beating faster and fearful beneath his own pulse, and Belkia’s mocking voice as she attacks Lily.  
  
Then Sakuya’s expression twists again.  
  
“Hah? You sound like a nagging husband who caught his wife cheating,” he sneers. Kuro thinks that analogy says more about him and Mahiru than it does Mahiru and _Misono_.  
  
“Anyway, you don’t even matter,” Sakuya continues. “You’ve known Mahiru for, what, a week? You’ve simply killed some time together.”  
  
“That doesn’t matter,” Misono says shortly. “Shirota called me his friend. The amount of time we’ve known each other is irrelevant.”  
  
“ _Friends?_ ” Sakuya laughs, high-pitched and desperate. “You believed such a common lie? No, of course, a sheltered kid like you who has only ever known his father’s garden wouldn’t have a clue about the real world and the way people deceive each other.”  
  
“It seems there’s no reasoning with you,” Misono says flatly, stretching out his arm. The pink-hued shadows of Lily’s power crackle around him.  
  
Sakuya looks unimpressed.  
  
“What can a frail kid like you even do without your Servamp?”  
  
“We’re still fighting together,” Misono says. Sakuya’s brow furrows.  
  
“Pay attention, Shirota. I’ll show you how to use a Lead,” Misono adds. Even before the power of it crackles to life, Sakuya is jerking in surprise, turning to look in the direction Belkia and Lily had ended up in with wide eyes—they grow wider still when Belkia, with a yelp of surprise, is strapped down into a fancy, red-backed chair that appears from nothingness.  
  
“What the hell is happening!?” Belkia howls, trying to jerk out of the restraints keeping her in place.  
  
Lily appears behind her, scythe in hand, looking as if they were pulled straight out of one of those renaissance-era paintings about death. With a smile, they swing their weapon, the curved blade cutting right through Belkia’s neck.  
  
Despite Mahiru’s panicked noise, Kuro sees the truth of it even before Belkia is slumping out of the chair and onto the cold concrete; the only thing that had been physically cut was her hair.  
  
“One down,” Misono says, voice cold.  
  
“H-How did you do that without cutting her…? There’s no blood,” Mahiru asks. He’s dropped a hand onto Kuro as if for comfort, gripping the back of his neck nervously. Kuro allows it despite the mild discomfort he feels.  
  
“What I destroy is the mind, not the body,” Lily says cheerfully, then points to an uneven lock of hair framing their face. “But I cut her hair in revenge.”  
  
“Petty,” Misono mutters, then looks back towards Sakuya, still looking in shock at Belkia’s crumpled body. “Now it’s just you. What a pity, having to do this even though Shirota called you his best friend.”  
  
At that, Sakuya looks up.  
  
“Best friend?” He repeats. Mahiru’s grip on Kuro grows tighter and he resists the urge to squirm.  
  
“Yeah...I guess so. If our friendship could have had one more week, that would have been great. I...was really looking forward to the festival.”  
  
Kuro can’t look at him, wearing that kind of longing face. Mahiru makes a wounded noise in his throat.  
  
“Alicein Misono, have you thought about what Mahiru wants right now?” Sakuya continues. “If Mahiru still sees me as his friend—”  
  
“Misono, don’t listen!” Lily interjects, but Sakuya keeps speaking.  
  
“Wouldn’t we have ended up becoming friends, too? If only things were different. Should we really be killing each other?”  
  
The glow of Lily’s power over Misono’s skin fizzles out. Something odd happens—Misono opens his mouth to speak but whatever he tries to say comes out garbled, his eyes rolling back in their sockets as he begins folding forward while Lily rushes to catch him.  
  
Belkia is there, suddenly up and moving, but her movement is stiff and jerky even as she succeeds in cutting off Lily’s leg before they can get to Misono. Her voice is off, too, higher-pitched than usual.  
  
“Skewered...your... _leg_ , hahaha…” she laughs, stilted and odd, and Misono—who had caught himself before he could land face-first on the ground—begins to push himself up.  
  
Sakuya is having none of it. A handful of his knives pin Misono to the ground, stabbing through his clothes and digging into his skin as well.  
  
…Kuro has never seen that sort of angry look on Lily’s face before. It’s actually pretty scary. They shake off the string-maneuvered Belkia’s attacks to reach Misono’s side with a ferocity Kuro never would have expected from them.  
  
“Well now, how much of what I just said was a lie?” Sakuya asks, though Kuro is relatively certain the answer is _none of it_. “And, for that matter, when did I ever say that only Belkia and I were here…?”  
  
The sight of Misono, his blood spilling out into the concrete as Lily tugs some of Sakuya’s knives away, seems to wake Mahiru up.  
  
“Sakuya, _enough_ ,” he cries out. “What’s the point of all this? I really, I thought the three of us could…”  
  
Ahh...what a pain, Kuro thinks, closing his eyes.  
  
“Did I do something stupid, Shirota…?” Misono mutters from where he lay. “Wanting to protect a friend…”  
  
Mahiru stands, indignant, finally releasing Kuro in the process.  
  
“It’s not! It’s not stupid! Sakuya, _why?_ ” He turns from Misono to face Sakuya.  
  
“Why?” The subclass repeats, stalking forward. “Mahiru, you...never understood the feelings that troubled me all this time. Every time we would walk home together, laughing without a care in the world…”  
  
Kuro shivers, fur standing on end as Sakuya leans in close to Mahiru.  
  
“My throat felt so dry. The happier we were together, the drier it felt until it became painful...it was so difficult not to kill you, you know? When I felt like that, being with Tsubaki would calm me down. It’s not my fault. It’s not his, either. We can’t survive without hurting others, you know? That’s why—”  
  
“There’s no way that’s true!” Mahiru cries out, even as Sakuya leans so far in that he’s a breath away from Mahiru’s mouth, knives in hand.  
  
“It is true. That’s why you should be a bit more serious about killing me, Mahiru, or I might kill some more of your _real_ friends.”  
  
Something strange happens then—Sakuya flinches as if struck, turning behind him with a wild-eyed look of fear and dread. Kuro uses the opportunity to suck in a deep breath, steeling himself for the nausea that comes with his transformation, and throws himself forward to grab Mahiru by the waist and drag him away.  
  
“S-Sakuya—” Mahiru tries to say, squirming to get out of his grip, but Kuro tightens his hold slightly.  
  
“Leave it, Mahiru. You can’t fight as you are now.”  
  
“Your wounds are healed, right?” Mahiru asks him. Kuro frowns. They _are_ , for the most part—he still aches, but both the internal damage and the exterior wounds have healed over.  
  
“Well, mostly,” he hedges. “We should still run—” Mahiru makes an exasperated sound, pushing his way out of Kuro’s grip.  
  
“I won’t run! Misono’s hurt and can’t fight anymore, and Sakuya is...he’s my friend. I have to—”  
  
“Nobody will blame you if you don’t,” Kuro tries, desperately, to make him see sense, reaching out a hand to his arm. “Lily won’t let anything more happen to Misono—we should leave before you get hurt, too.”  
  
“I can’t just do nothing!” Mahiru snaps, slapping his hand away and storming away. Kuro watches, fear and resignation sticking thickly in his throat as Mahiru tears off his wristband.  
  
He shudders when Mahiru throws the wristband at Sakuya, his broom-weapon manifesting in a flood of Kuro’s blue-hued shadows.  
  
Someone laughs.  
  
It isn’t him. It isn’t Mahiru or Sakuya. His head feels stuffed full of cotton; he can barely make out the crack in Mahiru’s voice as he howls Sakuya’s name and attacks him.  
  
Kuro closes his eyes, shaking. He can hear Sakuya and Mahiru both, though their words and actions are muffled through the fuzzy feeling in his head and ears; the only thing he hears with clarity is that _things_ voice.  
  
“I’m drowning, I’m drowning!” It cries with a mocking, laughing lilt. Kuro feels like he’s drowning, too, sinking into something thick and syrupy.  
  
“What should I do, Kuro? Mahiru’s feelings are flowing into us without end,” the creature says. “His fear, his regret, his indecisiveness and worries for rejection—they’re flooding us. If you hadn’t met him...we wouldn’t have this swamp.”  
  
It’s not Mahiru’s fault, Kuro wants to say. It’s his own for giving in and solidifying their contract; he hadn’t known beforehand that this was possible, that Mahiru’s feelings would feedback loop into his own so strongly. He had never wanted to know, before.  
  
“Whenever you do anything,” the creature says, and as Kuro sinks into the muck flooding his senses, he sees it—not its parody of a cat form, but the thing that looks like _him_ , sickening, sewn-shut smile and all. “It always means everyone else will hurt. It’s your fault.”  
  
 _Yeah_ , Kuro thinks, letting himself be pulled beneath the surface. The liquid is so dark and thick that the monster vanishes from his sight. _I know. It’s my fault. My fault…_  
  
 _What a pain_.  
  
It isn’t Kuro who opens his eyes again. It isn’t Kuro who grabs Mahiru by his hair and his arm, sinking teeth into his vulnerable throat without a care for the boy's comfort.  
  
Thick, muddy shadows flood the area. Kuro hears nothing that Mahiru says; none of his pleas, none of his fear.  
  
He comes back to himself only briefly when a bullet pierces through his heart painfully. Doubt Doubt’s silhouette, accompanied by that of a young man who must be his Eve, briefly appears as his vision swims and the beast within him retreats.  
  
As he loses consciousness for real, Kuro thinks he might have to thank Doubt Doubt—if his brother hasn’t come to kill Mahiru, that is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact i love coffee and my username is glueskin!!
> 
> here is me talking about things:  
> \- X-gender is the term the majority of people who identify outside of the gender binary use in japan. its the equivalent of nonbinary; they put X as identifiers for their gender on papers or websites. a well-known example is yuhki kamatani, author of several well known series such as nabari no ou, shounen note, and more recently shimanami tasogare (all of these series contain LGBTQ themes, including canonically gay and trans characters). kamatani came out as X-gender in 2012, but unfortunately they have since deleted their twitter  
> \- kuro doesnt like being around his siblings for obvious reasons lol. the guilt!!  
> \- in canon, jeje and lily seem to be quite close and get along well, given that lily invited jeje to live within the alicein household with them and jeje actually took them up on the offer for quite some time. i hope im portraying that well so far  
> \- jeje is paranoid and nervous to me even if he doesnt often show it and hes...dangerous...kuro knows hes capable of violence and doesnt feel very guilty for hurting others if he feels hes justified, hence how tense he gets in the diner, worried jeje might startle and hurt mahiru  
> \- I LOVE WRATH AND WORLD END i cant wait to write them more lmao...wraths genuine concern makes kuro feel so guilty because he believes he doesnt deserve it after what hes done and also he is literally lying to everyone by never mentioning he is literally out here choking on toxic plants every day
> 
> okay, so, let me talk about misono:  
> \- misono is sickly. we know this. exactly what he has is never discussed; it seems to be heart-related or perhaps something like really bad anemia, but...that doesnt explain his falling asleep. i know its a gag in the manga but i write him with narcolepsy anyway.  
> \- this is why he begins collapsing even before sakuya attacks him; what he was experiencing in that moment was a cataplexy attack. cataplexy is a common symptom of narcolepsy; a cataplexy attack is when you experience sudden, uncontrollable muscle weakness or paralysis. its brought on by strong emotions - stress, grief, happiness, even laughter. you feel it coming on and then begin to collapse. some people are able to catch themselves on the ground or start lowering themselves before the attack fully hits, avoiding injury. these attacks usually last up to 2 minutes and the person experiencing cataplexy is fully awake and aware the entire time but is unable to speak
> 
> writing sakuya in this chapter made me so goddamn miserable i really dealt myself like +1000 psychic damage. his TRAUMA....  
> \- if you havent read the manga/watched the anime in a while, the part where he flinches and looks behind himself is when he hallucinates his sister  
> \- even kuro, who is currently in the sauce of Hanahaki Induced Nausea, Dizziness And Physical Numbness, can see how much sakuya is projecting with his 'you sound like a nagging husband who caught his wife cheating' line @ misono. like. dude. we get it... you have a cwush...if even kuro can see it you suck at hiding it


End file.
